This Mesmerizing Graphic Shows Which Cancers Are The Most Common And The Most Deadly

Which cancers affect the most people in the U.S.? And which ones
are people most likely to die from?

Biotechnologist David Taylor created the visualization below for
his blog and gave us permission to reproduce
it here.

The larger the size of the pie, the more people affected. The
larger the red slice, the higher the death rate. You can mouse
over the pie charts for more information about each kind of
cancer.

Most people know that particular kinds of cancer occur more
frequently than others but may not know how much variation there
is in rates of survival.

Breast and prostate cancers are the most common, with a 5-year
survival rate of 86.4% and 98.8% and a 20-year survival rate of
65% and 81%, respectively. Lung cancer, a close third in
prevalence, has a 20-year survival rate of 6.5%. The deadliest is
pancreatic cancer, which has a 20-year survival rate of just
2.7%.

Taylor pulled the data from a blog post by Edward Tufte of Yale
University, which was based on a 2002 study in The Lancet. While things have
changed since then, that study gave a very complete picture of
the mortality rates of different kinds of cancer, making it
useful for an analysis of relative prevalance and
mortality.